This invention refers to a one-piece implantation lens as a replacement for a natural lens which has been surgically, particularly extracapsularly, removed from the eye of living beings of a higher order and which has, on the one hand, a central lens body designed as a collective lens and, on the other hand, holding means in the form of thin-walled, flat support elements arranged peripherally on the lens body, radially extending outwardly from the lens body and fixing it in place, with the outer edge of the support elements lying on a circular arc around the center of the lens body; and which consists of a homogenous, crystal-clear, high-temperature resistant plastic, preferably vulcanized siliconematerial, with a specific gravity of between 1.01 and 1.08, preferably approximately 1.02.
Implantation lenses of the type described above have already proven their excellence in practical ophthalmology.
The wish has been expressed to be able to fold the lenses of the type in question, which consist of a flexible material, in order to enable them to be inserted into the eye through as small an incision as possible, of only a few millimeters in length, after the natural, clouded lens has been extracapsularly removed. On the one hand, it is necessary that the material of the implantation lens be relatively soft and flexible, but stiff enough to guarantee stability of form of the lens, yet on the other hand, the lens should be foldable for the reasons given above. However, the foldability of lenses with a corresponding thickness of the central lens body is limited in view of the required refracting power.